Griphook says earlier in the fic that “only a fool would trust anything other than goblin stamped galleons”, or words to that effect. So maybe wizards are free to trade gold with Muggles, but raw gold is easy to fake, so nobody is interested in raw gold, and only galleons are valuable. The goblins will stamp some galleons for you for a fee, but they don’t want to hyper-inflate the economy so they only do small batches. Either its near-impossible to fake up galleons, or the threat of goblin war against counterfeiters is too scary for people to try. Or have I missed something?
Either its near-impossible to fake up galleons, or the threat of goblin war against counterfeiters is too scary for people to try.
I think you’re onto something. Specifically, in the books, Goblins possess magic metalworking techniques wizards don’t know how to duplicate—and they know how to detect them. (It’s a point of contention as part of the whole “give us wands” thing.)
Griphook says earlier in the fic that “only a fool would trust anything other than goblin stamped galleons”, or words to that effect. So maybe wizards are free to trade gold with Muggles, but raw gold is easy to fake, so nobody is interested in raw gold, and only galleons are valuable. The goblins will stamp some galleons for you for a fee, but they don’t want to hyper-inflate the economy so they only do small batches. Either its near-impossible to fake up galleons, or the threat of goblin war against counterfeiters is too scary for people to try. Or have I missed something?
I think you’re onto something. Specifically, in the books, Goblins possess magic metalworking techniques wizards don’t know how to duplicate—and they know how to detect them. (It’s a point of contention as part of the whole “give us wands” thing.)